The Man From UNCLE: The Protege Affair
by Gmku
Summary: U.N.C.L.E.'s top agents search for killers in the wake of a grim loss that leaves them eyeing their territory like exhausted soldiers bracing for the next ambush.
1. Chapter 1

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

The Protégé Affair 

PROLOGUE

 _Somewhere in New York City, Early February 1972_

Pigeons could not find a foothold on the sleek monolith of the United Nations building, and neither could the snow that clung adhesively to everything else, the branches of small trees and the edges of awnings, the tops of trucks and taxis that cut one another off in the streets far below the office of Alexander Waverly.

The Old Man, one of five regional heads of the multinational organization known as the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, continued to stare at the sheath of typed papers on his desk. He had not yet looked up at his two agents, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, his top operatives in the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. They had been standing in front of their boss for five minutes.

For the first time, Waverly looked up from the papers. He stared stonily at his agents.

"She had it, dammit," Waverly exclaimed mildly, and then turned his gaze to the view of the U.N. building in the picture window. "She had the information. And now it's gone."

Solo stiffened. "With all due respect, sir, she—"

"Damn you, if you don't think I know it, Mr. Solo!" The muscles in the Old Man's face were uncharacteristically strained.

Silence fell over the three men. The immense window rimmed in rounded dark metal sealed the taxi tops and bouncing heads of Forty-Third Street into an aquarium hush, and in the other direction one could look over a definite number of rooftops at the windows of the caramel-colored Dakota apartment building where, by some reports, _Rosemary's Baby_ had been filmed and John Lennon and Yoko Ono, among others equally rich and famous, now lived. The old-fashioned idea of Kuryakin's that order should body forth the idyllic found confirmation in many corners of the city on such winter days. The headquarters building itself could form a soothing shelter from the streets outside, which were overtrafficked and clamorous. Almost twenty years ago Kuryakin had started living in New York City, though as a child he had dreamed of spending his life here. His protégé for many years, a young woman, a girl really, from Connecticut, had established residence in the Village in the middle 1960s, and on one of her first visits around the city Kuryakin had taken her to the Museum of Modern Art, and later claimed that he had never seen anyone so interested in the place. She was around twenty-four years old at the time.

 _Somewhere in Paris, late January 1972_

The facades of buildings darkened in tint, the lights within windows seemed not merely to burn but to blaze, and abruptly the rain was upon Kuryakin. In the instant before it fell, the midnight air felt full of soft circular motion and a silent cry of "Hurry!" Night people hustled for shelter. Pelted, the U.N.C.L.E. agent in command black field jacket and cargo pants gained the cave of a café. The next instant he was staring at the headlights of a BMW screeching down the otherwise complacent street, careening unsteadily in the downpour.

Kuryakin felt the adrenaline surge. He yanked the Special from under his jacket, locked his arms in firing position, and spun to meet the hurtling vehicle. The sedan rocketed up to the curb in front of him. The laser sight from the Special picked out the dark passenger side window. His finger tightened on the trigger, the door burst open, and then thin red beam from the pistol had landed like a wicked wasp on the right temple of Napoleon Solo's drenched forehead.

"Get in!"

Solo was at the wheel, his face smeared with mud, his dark suit jacket torn at the shoulder where blood oozed.

"Get in!" Solo yelled again, eyebrows squinting, eyes glittering with paranoia as he glanced toward the rear window. "The mission has been compromised! They're on to us!"

The rain seemed to intensify yet one more notch as Kuryakin dashed and folded himself into the shelter of the car. In the same moment, more tires squealed a block away, and as Solo compressed the gas pedal, the back window cracked and crumbled and small objects unmistakably the size of bullets slammed into the arm rest next to Kuryakin, then into the dashboard, then the chrome of the Blaupunkt tape player and FM radio.

He heard a groan from the back seat. He looked back. April Dancer. Not in good shape. Full head of hair covering her face, her head bobbing like a snapped puppet.

"What happened?" Kuryakin gasped.

"Took her prisoner," Solo snapped back, fighting for control of the vehicle on the rain slicked street. Their shadow was closing. "I freed her using some explosives on the cell door, but I'm afraid she's hit. Shrapnel. Looks bad."

Kuryakin looked back and confirmed the assessment. He could make out a deeper shade of black on Dancer's black turtleneck, directly over the heart.

"Hang on!" Solo yelled.

Kuryakin braced with a hand on the dash and the other on the door. A bullet whizzed past his ear, shattered the windshield in front of him. Solo twisted the wheel, and Kuryakin felt himself go slightly weightless as buildings and lights blurred in front of him. There was the sound of tires desperately braking behind them, then a tremendous crash, and Kuryakin regained his orientation enough to witness a large black breaking through a wrought-iron fence and breaking the glittering surface of the peaceful and colorful Seine River.

Solo was breaking softly, then merging into traffic, glancing around at the faces of startled café people.

"I'm so...so damned c-c-cold," Dancer whispered from behind them. "Cold. Cold."

Her teeth were chattering. Kuryakin whisked off his jacket and threw it over her, tucking it in as best he could around her rib cage, and stopped, horrified at the fear he saw taking over her eyes. That faraway look. No. Dammit, no!

"April!" Kuryakin shouted. "April! Stay with me, April! April, look at me! Look at me!"

"It's very cold now, Illya," she stuttered, and there seemed nothing she could do about the odd skeletal vibrations that possessed her.

 _Somewhere in New York City, February 1972_

Waverly said the article in _Le Monde_ was concise to the point of poetry: An American espionage agent, possibly CIA, machine-gunned windows of a coutre boutique in Fresnes to the east of the French capital before rushing inside.

The dark-suited agent blew open doors to a basement room, then left with a young woman together by car. Two men were found dead inside, petty thieves wanted for drugstore robberies around Paris. Television pictures showed a hole blown in a door to the shop and burned out cars lining streets nearby.

Illya Kuryakin kept repeating the accounting of events and he and Napoleon Solo stood with legs apart and braced, arms locked, hands held in a vice grip on the handles of their respective UNCLE Special automatics. The two UNCLE agents pointed the black pistols at a wall lined with insubstantial silhouettes, the anonymous shapes of cardboard men who passively accepted every searing slug the two agents could pump out. Through his headphones Kuryakin could hear, muffled, their modified Walther P-38s coughing repeatedly, methodically, mathematically, and he felt a strange happiness to feel the heft of the weapon in his hand. The gun, after all, could survive anything — mud, water, sand, any meteorological extreme, the blinding snow of a Russian night, say, or the icy rain that cut across New York City streets and through his hair to pelt his scalp with an unforgiving and wicked insistence.


	2. Chapter 2

Section One: "So Do Our Minutes Hasten to Their End."

 _Somewhere near the town of Point Pleasant in Connecticut, January 1972_

Throughout the burial, the rain fell in a heavy downpour. Men and women huddled together beneath a canvas canopy and first listened to the words of a priest and then watched the glistening casket descend into the muddy earth. The chill air flattened the threadbare suit against his chest, and afterwards, after folding himself behind the wheel of their waiting sedan, Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin sat still and, for a few moments, watched the rain spatter on the windshield, a light pattern of rain. The rain played a sad melody, and the rain brightened the dead grass and black bare tree limbs, and the rain led him to a memory of another rain, the rain of a thunderstorm one afternoon in Russia, where the rain could roll in like a train from the countryside, boxcars loaded with apples.

If he put himself on the other side of the window, on the outside looking in, he would see a car window lit with the soft glow of dashboard panel lights. He would want to ask the blonde Slavic man how he felt, sitting behind the steering wheel and staring at the rain. Was the lit cabin a cave in the storm? Did it mark a safe harbor? The rain fell out on the asphalt, each drop tapping down and then flattening into one another.

As the car warmed up, their nostrils made plumes of frost. It was January. Through the windshield, the gunmetal gray of the lowering sky seemed forceful yet enigmatic. The immense level swath of the lawn past the gravesite was, though this was winter's heart, green, but the color was frozen, paralyzed, vestigial, artificial. Beyond the cemetery, a long line of black funeral cars, gently chugging, floated up the roadway toward the small New Hampshire town of Point Pleasant. Outdoors after the church service, in the face of spatial grandeur, Kuryakin thought his sadness had become blanketed, muffled. Dwarfed, it had retreated into a cold spot in his stomach, had become hard and sullen and contemptible. Kuryakin's short and slender silhouette took on dignity; his shoulders straightened, and he sat behind the wheel of the car, if not at peace, yet with such pressured stoic grace that the lump in his stomach was enrolled in his easy breathing. Kuryakin turned the cold key and heard the ignition catch. The ignition triggered other automatic responses in the engine that made soft humming noises and that would allow them to leave under some kind of power from this place. The grimacing grilles brightened in the steady rain; the reflections in the chrome were iridescent as diamonds. As he pulled away from the gravesite, Kuryakin glanced around at his surroundings, the carefully manicured lawn, the pruned trees, the neat rows of grave markers and headstones. He looked around at everything again, eyeing the cemetery with the instinctive paranoia of an exhausted soldier bracing for the next ambush.

By the time they reached town, the rain had stopped but the water still rushed down gullies at the side of the road. He wanted to stand on the porch of one of the big houses they passed, to stand on the porch and listen to the calm. In one of the yards, he saw a child place both hands, fingers spread far apart, into the mud and wonder at the small outlines.

 _This business… this life,_ Kuryakin thought to himself. _It's hard to do what we have to do. To know the sorrow of wanting to feel closer to another when the circumstances of our livelihood only conspire against the goal._

Solo was silent, too, eyes unfocused and staring vacantly ahead.

Kuryakin himself had seen his share of unfairness and tragedy. He remembered in Lima a year ago how cryptic, intimidating posters showed up in the street of the capital city suddenly one morning. He had looked through his car window to see a dead dog dangling from a lamppost with the phrase "Long Live Presidente Ezquival" written on a sign around its neck. The guerillas were everywhere and nowhere; they were Thrush-trained and -paid hit-and-run artists of some senseless revolution, staging gruesome acts at their own convenience, and nothing could prepare Kuryakin for the horrors. Terrible things just happened: children blew themselves up; Kuryakin, fleeing in the car for the airport that time, passed a dead man hanging upside down and in flames — at least that's what he thought he saw (it went by in a flash). Over the years, Kuryakin was getting used to a world in which spectacular ferocities had overtaken the reality he had known — a world de-legitimatized by violence and hapless to defend itself.

But as he pulled away now from the peaceful little town of Point Pleasant and onto the rain-blackened highway headed south to New York City, his heart changed its tone. He also believed to the core in the idealism of his chosen profession. If there were difficulties, ambiguities, doubts, they served only to emphasize to him that the great mystery was that his ideals were out there, beckoning to him, even though he knew he might never live up them. The great writers were absolutely right, he thought: we are part mythical (our ideals) and part human (our flaws), and sometimes the tension in straddling the two worlds was just too great.

Solo looked away from the road to Kuryakin and raised an eyebrow, a dark forelock falling over his chiseled features.

"You've developed that inscrutable look again, Mr. Kuryakin," Solo said. "Somehow I find it vaguely encouraging."

Kuryakin allowed his friend an appreciative smirk, then lapsed again into pensive silence. Kuryakin's head was filled with images of the coffin lowering into the ground, a bronze shell shining wetly like a beautiful beetle, the smell of rain and earth heavy in his nostrils. Had they really buried her? In his memory of the terrible ordeal and all the events leading up to this afternoon, he was not even sure. And in his uncertainty he glimpsed a frightening suggestion of the way terror could alter reality so thoroughly that, step by step, the fantastic becomes accepted as the mere commonplace.

He thought about the time in Berlin and Russia with April a few months ago. It had been rough. He felt a pang of nostalgia for their shared miser. In the painful desire for the past, the questions were always the same. What is it you had meant to say? What had I said? And now, just outside her hometown, the rain changed to snow, and the snow began to fall to the same as usual transfigurational effect, making the world seem not the world, very briefly, and then what it always is again: just the world-changed, changeable.

 _April, in the little Russian town near the house we came to, there's a bell tower I'd meant to show you, how there's still a music hearable, despite the bell itself missing — lost, or stolen, although it is difficult to steal a bell so large, presumably, and a shame to lose one. I'd meant to show you that._

In the midst of his reverie, he heard Solo say: "A shame, Illya."

 _Wind enters and leaves the tower like a thing that lives there — but nobody lives there, no one, I meant to say._

 _Our new manhunt will be cast in a spooked land_ , Kuryakin thought to himself, and, like the pilot of a ghost ship, he gripped the wheel and then relaxed the grip, shifted in the driver's seat and straightened his shoulders. He felt the weight of his weapon in his shoulder holster, and wished for some measure of relaxation and comfort in the sedan — a straining for ease which ends all possibility of ease, and destroys the thought of any rest ahead.


	3. Chapter 3

Section Two: "There Is Nothing Serious in Mortality."

 _U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, New York City, a few days later_

Seriousness, for Illya Nikovitch Kuryakin, was a flashing machete to swing at the thriving vegetation of global degeneracy. The degeneracy sprang from our barbarism — and our barbarism was conquering the world, Kuryakin believed. U.N.C.L.E. agents, doomed to tramp through an absurd century, were to inflict their seriousness on criminals and mad scientists, thieves and government agents gone rogue, cruel dictators, and, of course, the ever-present Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity, or Thrush, as it was known, U.N.C.L.E.'s primary adversary, whose aim was to conquer the world.

The weight of this seriousness was palpable when Kuryakin entered the maze beyond the unassuming little tailor shop, inside regional U.N.C.L.E. headquarters in New York City. This morning, Kuryakin flinched as the steel gates clashed shut behind him and Napoleon Solo and the bolts shot home. Kuryakin and Solo stopped at the reception desk where the woman from a West Indies island pinned coded yellow triangular badges to the right breast of their respective suit coats. They pushed through the doors of ballistics-proof glass and steel that cut them off from the world. They walked with assurance, Solo going slightly ahead, down corridor in an atmosphere of fluorescence and distant buzzings.

Who were they after now? The affair with Loveless and Grieves had muddied the waters, certainly. If the two criminals were associated with Thrush, then Kuryakin and Solo faced a great challenge. Thrush was considered so dangerous an organization that even governments who were ideologically opposed to each other — such as the United States and the Soviet Union — had cooperated in forming and operating the U.N.C.L.E. organization. Similarly, when he and Solo held opposing political views, the friction between them was held to a minimum through their mutual devotion to their cause, not to mention their affection for one another as kindred spirits. Odd as it felt for Kuryakin to admit, one might even call the two U.N.C.L.E. operatives friends.

They were right on time for their appointment in Section Eight with research scientist Maureen Kelly. A leggy brunette who looked much too young to hold a position of such responsibility, Kelly immediately explained that she had no idea what went wrong on the Paris mission.

"Don't be so quick to blame the technology. Or the technician," Kuryakin countered quietly, standing with his partner before a long steel bench of technological wonders. "Sometimes things simply go wrong."

Solo said nothing, let his eyes go slightly out of focus, and stepped back from the Kelly's laboratory bench. Like the outpouring of a technological hymn to technological creation, the top of the bench was strewn with loops of rubber, tubes of copper, cylinders of graphite, gleaming elbows of iron, chunks of plastic, rags, drops, and dusty scraps of all kinds. This tumble, full of tools and gadgets, was raked by Kelly as she searched for the proper nests for the two explosive caps she retrieved from Solo. She wore a white blouse unbuttoned by three buttons at the top, and her blue eyes were big behind a pair of tortoise shell horn-rimmed spectacles. She was pretty all right, Kuryakin thought, and she probably had a long career at U.N.C.L.E. ahead of her, which made Kuryakin feel sad and lonesome.

She batted her eyes and peered into the handsome face of Napoleon Solo. The center of every United Network Command legend was this hero who had spent years chasing every incarnation of Thrush while remaining an entirely rational, humane, and good-natured man — the opposite of the criminal in every way. Solo, as usual, was dressed to the teeth: elegant dark Italian suit, shirt the color of the most intense blue sky, and red tie of subtle coat-of-arms configurations.

The one and only Napoleon Solo, the man from U.N.C.L.E. and master of the wry smile and mischievous twinkle. It was the kind of charisma that could keep you guessing whether such a likeable man could kill.

"What's new in the world of fantastic gadgets, Miss Kelly?" Kuryakin asked, as if kindly trying to draw the woman's mind away from a dangerous, or at least hopeless, matter, and for the next half hour, Kelly provided a précis of discoveries and developments from U.N.C.L.E.'s crackerjack cabal of technological and scientific wizards: a lipstick camera that took photographs and measured space in three axes from one vantage point; a silver box that disguised a video scrambler; a man's plain gold ring that detected heartbeat signatures; a vile containing non-lethal radioactive isotopes an agent might slip in someone's wine after which the isotopes could be read by a geo-synchronous satellite; yet another ring, this one featuring a hidden jewel that contained a sedative powerful enough to make a person pass out on contact; and an expensive-looking cigarette lighter that could disrupt any electrical field or radio signal within a 420-yard radius.

 _It was all certainly serious stuff_ , Kuryakin said to himself. They would go, in effect, to war with this stuff. They went to war, as it were, with the criminal world, because it was their duty to be in contact with such a reality as much as possible, and this kind of war was a tremendous reality in their world.

Kuryakin, Solo, and Kelly were joined at the bench by Alexander Waverly. Baggy kneed and tweedy, the old guy looked hunched, pale, weathered; the years had diminished the master law enforcement chief. Thrush had built up a new and more robust presence all over the world, even infiltrating some governments. With the United States embroiled in troubles in Southeast Asia and in its own domestic affairs, and with widespread distrust of anything resembling a covert agency, U.N.C.L.E.'s constituent supporters hardly had been forthcoming with much tactical help of late.

It was rare but not unusual to see the law enforcement chief roaming beyond his office. The old fox had an uncanny knack of showing up in the oddest places and at the damnedest times.

"We should take our good news where we can find it, gentlemen," the old man said with wan spite. "The good news is that the explosive disc that you, Mr. Solo, used to spring Miss, uh, Dancer was not at fault. Nor were you in placing it. Perfect match for the weight of the door. But, according to our analysts, the door was wired with a small amount of C4. You had no way of knowing, of course."

Kuryakin met the gaze that blazed from the face of seamy wrinkles. It was a tough gray face, bleached by spots of silver bristle — the tough face of a man who had sent many a man and woman to their deaths, and he was taking this one hard. Had a protégé ever been as beloved by her superior as April Dancer? Alexander Waverly, former war intelligence officer, current recluse/law enforcement commander genius, had treated Dancer with exquisite tenderness and respect. Dancer had survived a childhood of poverty and abandonment, and with affection and grace, Waverly often expressed his admiration for her determination to maintain her hard-won confidence in the face of every creep and bureaucratic obstacle that came her way in this man's world of the spy business.

Besides whatever personal feelings the old man was wrestling with, Waverly also had a political hot potato in his hands. It was a sensitive matter, Kuryakin knew, the use of female enforcement agents. It had been a delicate issue ever since April Dancer, U.N.C.L.E.'s first field agent recruit, had joined the force some eight years ago. The Board of Directors never had approved fully of the deployment of young women to front-line assignments, in spite of the fine accounting these women always gave of themselves (as Waverly continually pointed out).

Waverly drew a breath, closed his eyes again, and opened them as the breath came out. He groped absent-mindedly for his pipe pocket, but brought his hand out empty and instead shifted to rub his chin. "Gentlemen," he said, "another bit of good news, if you will — our Paris headquarters has determined the whereabouts of Loveless and Grieves. They are together with a few known Thrush operatives in the French countryside."

In recent times there had been an increasing and alarming reliance on the commando raid when the going got tough. Certainly, the old man could present good reason: With mad men desperately stepping up the doomsday tactics that continually brought the world to brink, it was difficult to argue with the logic that called for the need to eliminate such regimes. And yet, U.N.C.L.E.'s agents were not licensed assassins. Kuryakin had ended the lives of a number of bad guys, but he held that murder was a final resort, a last ditch to save the world. His boss had said the very thing. The most dangerous weapon in the world was a gun in the hand of an agent who felt no compassion for the enemy; so the old man had been known to say, once upon a time.

In line with this reasoning, U.N.C.L.E. would pinpoint the location and "take them live," as the saying went. U.N.C.L.E. would detain the criminals as prisoners with interminable sentences deep in the belly of the headquarters building, where criminals lived out the remainder of their lives (albeit in relative comfort as far prison environments went), available at all hours, at any given moment, for the prodding of U.N.C.L.E.'s most talented and successful interrogators. Waverly told them that they were to go France, where Kuryakin would lead the frontline investigation and field intercept; Solo would be available as backup some kilometers away and then help Kuryakin's team in transporting the criminals to the regional New York City headquarters.

Outside the small tailor shop on this crisp winter day, the newsstands were filling up with the latest installments of the world's crises and allurements. _Time_ , _Newsweek_ , _Life_ , _Look_ , _The New Yorker_ , _The New York Times_ , _Esquire_ , _Playboy_ , and this and that and every other kind of colorful thing from the city's vaulted presses and publishing houses. A poster announced a production of Beckett's _Waiting for Godot_. A copy of the _Paris Review_ announced so-and-so as "the last intellectual." It all still transfixed Kuryakin, and as always, it confirmed in his mind that it remained the task of the very best citizen to be sharply attentive and heroically stimulated.

Further along the street, the newest of the decade's most modern television sets occupied storefront windows, and pedestrians paused, braced against the wind, to watch the evening news. Retailers, as expected, had pulled out all the stops and decorated their stores with a variety of holiday-themed window displays (Kuryakin suspected it must be the dreaded Day of the Hearts and Chocolate Candy looming) to both entice shoppers and to celebrate the holiday with some romantic seasonal magic, although Kuryakin knew from his experience undercover at Macy's one year that, if you asked any store owners, they would tell you it was not an easy feat and most of the work gets done with plenty of anticipation. There were window displays full of frames, mirrors, and bathroom décor; one display was an eclectic mix of jewelry, recycled furniture pallets, home and garden décor, art, and photography. Some stores had won awards for their window dressings, and now they proudly displayed gold or silver stars from the commerce chamber.

Sometimes Kuryakin could not help but harrumph at the commercial garishness. For Kuryakin, each new season in New York City had begun to feel like the final victory of capitalism, and of the ideology of consumerism. He regretted his failure to grasp years ago that seriousness itself was in the early stages of losing credibility in the American culture at large even as he pined for America's buoyancy and dauntless spirit. In the middle of all the world's crises and allurements, indeed, he felt a certain emptiness, even physically, in his stomach, a real hunger. Kuryakin insisted to himself that what he needed most now, before he and Solo departed for France to capture the bad guys, was to treat himself — and Napoleon, if the suave devil had not already made arrangements for an evening with a certain young research scientist — to a good restaurant dinner and some elegant wine, followed by an hour or two losing himself in the wonders of the art museum. Otherwise, all the valor and drama would seem to him to have vanished from the slack-jawed, victorious West. There would be no ardor or ethics or conflict — and therefore no style, no virtue, no taste. What would be lacking, in a word, would be seriousness.


	4. Chapter 4

Section Three: "Though Waiting So Be Hell"

He was renting a place on Avenue du Six Jun in a little village in the Auvergne for a time, so that he could meet clients. (He was from the United States, where his company's headquarters was located in New York City.) He was a wine broker, and he had a copy of Kermit Lynch's _Adventures on the Wine Route_ on a library table in the front room. The Avenue du Six Jun house was on a gentle incline and faced an old bakery. Napoleon Solo visited the bakery often; they offered an abundance of esoteric breads, with rigorous service etiquette to follow, a _boulangerie_ that displayed a sticker on the storefront that said "Artisan Boulanger," from whose doors he watched many a villager face the immense challenge of having to walk toward home carrying a warm loaf and not simply gobble it up on the spot. He remembered that _le quignon_ — the heel of the baguette — was the name given to that chunk the buyer rips off to eat on the way home.

After drinking at the Le Festi'Val bar and café in another village not too far way until closing time one cold February night, Solo had wandered around to the street called Rue Principale, which was empty at that hour, except for a bent-over old woman in a black fringy shawl, who was wobbling along with a crooked cane and making her way toward the empty vineyards on the outskirts of the village. There weren't many of these old women left in the village, the ones whom farmstead chores had broken so often in accidents far from help, their hands still as hard as barn boards. Solo had stopped to watch the old woman, wondering how far she'd make it in her condition, when a young girl, an urchin, appeared from an alley and called out to her, "Jacqueline! Ay, Jacqueline!" and the old woman turned toward the voice. It was something Solo would remember always: He didn't know if he could put his finger on it after a number of years, but the excitement or joy, or whatever it was that these two experienced when they saw each other, never left Solo. That's all he could ever say about it. It was late at night on an empty street in a village in the countryside of southeastern France. Any euphoria he may have accumulated at the bar was gone. The pair met up and spoke in an animated way, though Solo couldn't hear them from that distance. It didn't matter. Solo moved on before they did, and somebody later told Solo that the old woman was born in Paris and had worked for Jean Moulin as part of the Marquis in World War II. Solo wasn't sure if that made any sense.

 _We don't remember everything,_ Solo thought, _not even the best law enforcement agent, but I'd love to know who's in charge of what we forget. If there's a system, it escapes me._ Years and years later, Solo would still remember that old woman and the girl's enchantment when he visited France, because heading home that night he was in a kind of trance that made him wonder later if he'd dreamed the rest of the evening. He had not, he was certain; but it had that quality, and it's hardly certain where dreams leave off.

Solo walked past the bright new discothèque. It was the scourge of childish indulgence, said the older men of the village, the grizzled regulars with whom, over the past several days, Solo had rubbed elbows at the Le Festi'Val bar and cafe. He had gained adoration among the region's citizens by nursing a playboy-like image draped in an old American glamour that clashed with the era's rebellion-tinged cultural tides. Long-haired patrons of both sexes were pouring out of the discothèque, and the sidewalk throbbed with the reverberations of deep, over-modulated bass tones. Cashmere, cologne, and white wine. Red racing cars in the street. Everyone was laughing, and the kids were young and pretty. _Where have you gone,_ he heard himself think, _where did you go? Those summer nights seem so long ago, and so is the girl I used to call the princess of New York City._

He stood for a moment at his car door, gaining some sobriety and shaking off his discothèque-induced lapse. His head was clear as he drove home, out an old tree-lined highway under the stars, though his ears were still ringing his hours in Le Festi'Val, more specifically, from various Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin covers by locals who'd learned popular music from listening to imported American records. Sitting in Le Festi'Val, Solo would recall pleasing images of cherries and wine, and rosemary and thyme, and Monique, the beautiful middle-aged woman with an hour-glass figure who owned the place, would tease him every night that her "peaches were ruined." The earliest houses in the valley were set close along the road for easy access in deep snow. Their lights were off at that hour, and Solo could just make out their shapes as he drove; up on the ridges, new homes glowed with yard lights and long driveways, their owners indifferent to weather. Solo turned on the radio, in case his post-Le Festi'Val bar and cafe attention wavered.

Walking in the door by himself at three in the morning made him long for someone to live with — anyone — but he'd soon be asleep, and in the morning he'd be glad to be alone again and would remind himself that he had to keep better hours if he was going to keep up the appearance that he had work to get done. Things were taking longer than expected — Illya Kuryakin had been tracking the criminals for almost a week. Solo was beginning to feel bored and lonesome.

Just south of the cemetery, where the road starts down into a creek bottom, was a car upside down and two people, a man and a woman, standing beside it. Their breath came out in clouds. The beams of Solo's headlights carved a garish hole in the dark. He could see that the man was holding and trying to calm the agitated woman, who was pointing toward a vacancy of underbrush and grapevine stands. Solo turned off the radio, so as to concentrate on, or try to understand, what he was seeing. He pulled up behind the overturned car without any sense that the couple was looking to him for help. On the contrary, the man was waving harshly at Solo to turn off his lights. When Solo did, he could no longer see the two of them very well, and it was unclear whether they wanted Solo to stay or whether there was something private about the woman's anguished wails that he should respect. The glimpse Solo had had of them with his headlights on had suggested that they were uninjured. Solo was not sure why this encouraged his bafflement or diffidence, but he just sat in his car waiting to be asked.

Solo knew that he couldn't just sit there, but he really couldn't leave. He got out of the car, risking the parking lights, which didn't seem to offend the man as the headlights had. Now the man beckoned Solo over, with the same kind of authoritarian gestures with which he had ordered the headlights extinguished. When Solo reached him, the guy stared Solo straight in the face in a disquieting way. He was not big but seemed fit, with close-cropped hair and noticeably long sideburns. He shook his head to indicate either that this entire situation was a mess or that there was nothing to be done about the dramatic noises coming from the woman, a remarkably small person in a grey wool overcoat that went all the way to the ground, who was still directing her cries toward the vines and underbrush. The man put his hand on Solo's shoulder and moved him to a spot away from the noise.

"She's crying for our daughter," he said in an oddly confiding tone, in the perfect English only the French know to speak. His tone sounded almost as though he were selling Solo the idea. When Solo asked if the child had been thrown from the car, he said, "There is no child, no girl. She's crazy. Just play along." His gaze was very direct. "I think you can do that, no?"

At this, the woman rushed over to Solo and the man and stood just at the level of Solo's chest so that the peculiar arrangement of her hair, piled atop her head with a comb thrust through it, drew Solo's exhausted scrutiny.

"He does not believe me. Apollina thrown from car. Only nine year old. Over there, where the wine grapes are to grow."

The man was staring at her. She touched a finger to the anchor button on Solo's World War II-era U.S. Navy pea coat and then pinched the fabric of the neck of his royal blue turtleneck sweater. He thought it was a curious gesture for someone in her position. Her diction, too, was in contrast to the refinement of her face and the delicacy of her clothing. The man watched her as though he'd never heard her speak before.

"Will you look for her? _He_ does not believe me, he refuse, and you see, I have no shoes on my feet."

The man tilted his head and nodded, and Solo concurred that there was no harm in going along. Wouldn't Kuryakin get a kick out of this story, he thought. It seemed entirely possible that there was a girl. As he set off, Solo wondered whom he believed.

He stumbled through the underbrush and the dried-up grapevines, his eyes not quite adjusted to the starry night. If nothing else, Solo thought something like a five-minute loop would demonstrate his willingness to help, but at the same time he listened for the sound of a child. He hadn't gone far before he stepped into a wild boar hole and fell; by the time he got the dirt out of his eyes and his mouth, he was annoyed. He thought of the old crooked women and the young girl back on Rue Principale and how there might have been something important about them that he couldn't put his finger on. He was in no hurry as he stood up to pick the vine splinters out of his left palm.

It was thus that he observed his car drive away, two little red taillights, tailpipe puffing, and this threw him into a strange reflective state, in which his dissolute night at Le Festi'Val and his ensuing exhaustion, the old woman and the young girl, the two crooks who had just stolen his car, his little French house, all seemed to have equal value — that is, no value. Odd, Solo thought, the set of random data points by which he simply moved across some screen before being faced with a connivance that he couldn't understand, though it seemed to belong to him. The flashing light on a remote radio tower across the valley looked almost like a beacon, and Solo thought that he could head for that as easily as go back to the road, where he no longer had a car. Later, misusing these memories to impress some girl, he would try pitching the idea that this descent into the abyss was hilarious, but Solo hardly felt like laughing now.

When he got back to the road, scuffed up, fingernails packed with clay, he looked both ways as though he might be run over on this empty highway. He knew where he was, just at the rise above the river on a path that took one to a beautiful church, the Rance valley, and so on; he could smell snow and also hay from the nearby barns on the night air. He was more than a few kilometers from his house, on a little-travelled road. A range of hills made a sharp silhouette against the starlight.

A car approached from the north, a pair of lights wobbling on the uneven pavement. Solo stood at the edge of the road, arms at his sides, gun-hand twitching ever so slightly. The car pulled up beside him, and from within he heard a woman's anxious voice: "Are you all right! You're lucky to be alive!" Solo made an effort to sweep the dirt from his clothes before opening the passenger door; it gave him the moment he needed to understand this interesting development. Then he got in, flinging himself back against the seat. "Yes," Solo breathed. "Very lucky indeed, thank you. I just need to get home."

"Do we need to alert… someone?" A pretty face, sharply focused, dark-brown eyes, shone in the car's dashboard light. Solo said he didn't think it was necessary. He realized then that his pen-phone was travelling somewhere in the night, in his car. He tried to make conversation as they drove on. "Is that Apas?" She didn't know; she was trying to watch the road. Solo remembered the groceries he'd had in the trunk of his car — some apples, orange juice, wheat germ, a bottle of Hennessy. He knew what was going to happen: it was three in the morning. They didn't even get upstairs. They had sex on the floor under the library table with the heavy wine book, the front door wide open, and then she started laughing and soon left. Solo carried his clothes upstairs, threw them on the floor, and went to bed.

Abrielle was her name. Solo couldn't remember if she got his or not. She was an emergency-room doctor-in-training, she'd said, and smelled like surgical tape. She was tired from work and on her way home. Solo believed he'd enjoyed the experience, but he really couldn't stop thinking about the old lady and her young friend. Abrielle did tell Solo that her job was grim and had taught her to "live it up." Maybe that explained it, if an explanation was required, and, well, he had to admit, he respected that philosophy.

He woke up hungry, but it was almost midmorning. He had work to do! U.N.C.L.E. had arranged for several real local wine makers to come by at least a couple of times a week, and Solo needed to brush up on the varietal that would be showing up at his door any moment now.

When he was this weary, Solo would find various mindless things to get himself ready for the day, which necessarily demanded physical deftness. He was trying to drop two pieces of old crusty bread into the slots of the toaster simultaneously, a tough hand-eye maneuver: he'd nail one and the other would flop out onto the counter. He was further distracted by the beauty of the morning, visible above the sink, a crowd of finches in the bare-limbed lilacs beside the kitchen window, through which, even though the frame was nailed shut for the winter, came the most ambrosial air from the spruces surrounding the yard.

He didn't get a chance to eat the toasted bread until later in the day, when it was cold and hard: a knock on his front door turned out to be the town's inspector detective Javert, very dark in his trench coat and smiling suspiciously at Solo as he entered the front room. He had a small, square head and a large nose. He didn't want any toast or wine, so Solo led him into the living room, where he offered him a straight-backed chair, an extraordinarily uncomfortable thing that gave its occupant the feeling of enduring an inquisition while insuring the brevity of a visit. He knew instinctively that this would be the right approach, given the startling appearance of the law. The chair made twerps out of most people, but the inspector detective looked like he owned it. It may even have added to his authority. He got right to the point.

"Do you know where your car is?"

"I don't. It was stolen."

"And you never got around to reporting it?"

"I was with an emergency-room doctor, tending to other matters. Actually a doctor-in-training, she told me. Has it been found?"

"It's in Beynac-et-Cazennac, Aquitaine, full of bullet holes."

This was a good time to say nothing.

"They've got the guy," he added.

"What about the girl?"

"In hospital. It does not look good for her. They robbed the Shell-Avia petrol station in town, rolled their car, and then got some help from you."

"Well, I wouldn't call it—"

"Really? Then why didn't you report it?"

"It was late."

" _Excusez moi, monsieur!_ We answer the phone both day and night, all hours."

"I should have called. Of course, I should have. I should have picked up the phone and called."

"I could probably make a case here. I'm not going to, because I don't think it would make it to a judge. Besides, your uncle wishes me to pass along that he will be here in two days and brings the guests you are expecting."

Solo said nothing.

"But it never needed to come to this. Maybe you should think about that. There was nothing in the world wrong with that young woman. Have you seen a pretty gal in a morgue? I don't recommend it."

Solo almost told him he had seen many a pretty girl in a morgue, but he thought better of it. The inspector detective gave Solo time to absorb what he had just said, but at that moment Solo's mind was elsewhere. "Who's that old woman walks around the village in the middle of the night?"

It took the inspector detective a moment to answer. "If she has a name, I do not know it. What precisely is your interest in the old woman?"

Solo still had his work to do. He was able to find a couple of clean glasses and some wine bottles he had not yet uncorked. He just couldn't figure out how far back he'd have to go to put in place the pieces that wound up in Beynac-et-Cazennac, Aquitaine. This was going to take a while.


	5. Chapter 5

Section Four: "And Let My Liver Rather Heat With Wine, Than My Heart Cool With Mortifying Groans."

Across from a glass-goods warehouse on an unassuming, windswept Bushwick block, the Teardrops offered glossy rewards for the determined seeker of a good drink. Outside, the bar was unmarked; those who opened the door would find a vast dark-walnut counter punctuated with small lamps stretching almost the length of the room. Those who rounded a corner would find another slender space greeting them, this one replete with plush booths. The décor was all dark wood, and the ceiling was a high swoop; dark brown wood tables seemed to soak up the dim yellow glow from teardrop-shaped light fixtures. On this Valentine's Day evening, refugees from frigid temperatures lined the bar. The music was unobtrusive; strains of 1950s-era Miles Davis from hidden speakers projected sullen glamour, and romantic conversations struck subdued tones to match. The soft glow from the teardrop fixtures stippled drinkers' faces with chiaroscuro.

The couples aligned in this cozy space looked like they wouldn't want to be anywhere else. Almost everyone was part of a pair: casually but fashionably dressed, and arranged in a metropolitan diorama of the stages of love, from polite first-date chatter to earnest longing. Robust house wines, nicely priced at just a few dollars, let talk flow freely, and perhaps stray into dangerous territory. A redhead whispered something to her beau and brushed his hand. Two women in black turtlenecks discussed the travails of love over salmon burgers: "She's already slept with all the people I think are cute," one said, of an acquaintance. In a corner booth, a man gently plucked a down-coat feather from a woman's sleeve and blew it into the air.

Exceptions nursed their drinks alone; there was a pretty young girl with long legs and shoulder-length brunette waves by herself at a small table, holding a huge strawberry drink, and her eyes were wide as cherry pies.

Shelved wines reached to the ceiling, burgundy reds and mellow whites and a few rosẻs. Behind the walnut counter, an obliging staff mixed full-bodied cocktails. A menu filled with haute cuisine and a long wine selection were complemented by sixteen cocktails divided into "house" and "classic" categories. Of the classics, the hot toddy was strong and flavored with piquant orange peel; the Penicillin was as bracing as a crushed pill. As for the house drinks, Napoleon Solo found the Pilar (mezcal, Cappelletti, Cocchi Americano) a pure amber color in a globe-shaped glass, and splutter-inducingly smoky; Illya Nickovitch Kuryakin found that the Babushka, a simple concoction of ginger, lime, and vodka, might give one enough succor to allow the possibility of returning to the bitter cold of the street, where a lone 10-speed Free Spirit bicycle lay in a snowdrift, buried up to its chain.

The young, pretty maitre d' stood just at the level of Solo's jawline so that the perfectly executed arrangement of his button-down collar and necktie - the two opposing ogee curves of the Brooks Brothers collar roll and the two opposing arcs of the four-in-hand tie knot forming a lovely Liberty Bell effect - seemed to demand her undivided scrutiny.

Solo cleared his throat self-consciously. "Uh, miss…"

She blushed. "Oh, yes. Excuse me. A table for two, of course."

Little else was more important between espionage partners in the field than close coordination of effort; it's relative unimportance off-duty was evident in the two agents' respective sartorial choices this evening. Like many men of the era, Solo dressed for his casual evening in a plaid sport coat, dark trousers, and tie. The heavy wool sport coat had a large-scaled black-and-cream Glen Urquhart check with a red windowpane overcheck, nicely accentuated by his red tie and the coat's own burgundy lining. His trousers were a dark brown wool and finished with plain-hemmed bottoms. The jacket was single-breasted with a three-button front, although the notch lapels rolled over the top button, leaving the center button most functional. It had a comfortably large fit with padded shoulders and roped sleeve-heads. His button-down shirt was crisp and white. Solo's slim silk necktie was a deep red that nicely brought out the overcheck in his sport coat. There was a small white squiggle pattern in the center that likely bore some significance to the tie manufacturer but for anyone else the pattern might look merely like a distorted fleur-de-lis. Because of the heavy snowfall that day, Solo had chosen a comfortable but solid pair of heavy blood-chocolate-colored leather brogues, and had put on his standard winter overcoat, a dark charcoal topcoat constructed of heavy wool with a subtle glen check. The topcoat was single-breasted with notch lapels and three-button front. He wore a simple slim all-gold watch with a brown leather strap. A gray glen check scarf was stuffed into the topcoat's outer right pocket. For his part, Kuryakin, in this weather, kept to the basic and utilitarian; his green down-stuffed U.S. military surplus parka with snorkel hood covered his medium-thick navy-blue turtleneck, which he wore with wide-wale forest-green corduroy five-pocket jeans, an Omega SeaMaster's watch, and brown Playboy chukkas. Kuryakin was growing out his already longish blonde hair. Black leather rabbit-fur gloves were stuffed in his parka's pockets.

Improvisation was also key to success in the field. It had its place off-duty, too, of course. But Kuryakin visibly flinched when Solo, as was his wont, brazenly began bragging to the maître d' that they were both "top secret agents" who required a table in the back of the restaurant, which, Solo went on, would enable them to establish their requisite intrusion point. The amused but puzzled look on the young woman's face seemed to compel Solo to further explain that, "in this line of work," one always sat facing the entrance, to see who entered and whether one was tailed. One also avoided windows, he revealed, and this place had huge floor-to-ceiling glass in the front seating area. As well, he said, choosing a table as far back as possible in an establishment forced whomever might be tailing you to try harder — and in so doing, reveal themselves.

The maître d' touched Solo's elbow, and with a little wink, disclosed she had "just the intimate spot" he was after. As they made their way through the mix of people in the bar area, she told Solo and Kuryakin that, to her, the gentle aura of this particular corner always felt like an overture to confess romantic sentiments. Solo ordered the grilled sirloin with dijon shallot smear and asparagus salad, Kuryakin chose the chicken breast under a brick with lemon, rosemary, marjoram, and roasted vegetables, and they both settled back with their drinks. As usual, Kuryakin did most of the listening, while his partner spoke expansively of the home improvements he'd had installed in his apartment while the two of them were on assignment in France. "As you might remember, a few years ago, I had all the windows equipped with capacitance-actuated alarms," he said, "the entry hall filled with ultrasonics.1 The trouble is, as with anything mechanical, parts wear out. I just had to replace the system's computerized innards to the tune of $3,000." After a few minutes, when Solo seemed to have exhausted his topic, Kuryakin turned the conversation in a new direction: "I take it you enjoyed your time in the French countryside?"

Solo laughed mildly. "It was a pleasant enough place for lying in wait," Solo said with a slight grin.

"I am intrigued by certain details in your report," Kuryakin said. "There is about it a kind of… frictionlessness."

Solo arched his eyebrows. "That's an interesting word."

"It can mean simple or easy but in your case I mean there is a kind of loose grip… on things."

"We're detectives, we're spies, we're secret agents," Solo said. "We're supposed to make sense of things. But it helps to have a few clues and hints to what is happening and why."

"Is that why you included the detail about your late-night encounter with the old woman and the little girl?"  
"Nothing made sense so I put in as much detail as I could recollect, hoping someday it might," Solo said. "Yes."

Solo looked thoughtfully away for a moment and then returned to his partner and said, "I think I will always remember that old woman and the girl's enchantment, because heading home that night I was in a kind of trance that made me wonder later if I'd dreamed the rest of the evening. I had not, of course; I am certain — but it had that quality."

Kuryakin nodded and said: "As the great poets and psychiatrists tell us, it is hardly certain where dreams leave off."

It might feel like a dream but perhaps Solo could think of it as something of a riddle, Kuryakin speculated - a riddle that ran through Solo's timeline in the village. At the sight of the old woman, Solo was tempted to imagine one thing, and then with the appearance of the girl, another, Kuryakin surmised. (Meanwhile, a young man was headed in their direction, stumbling a little over the feet of chic thirtysomethings with nice highlights who lounged in plush velvet chairs. "Those who pursue us may be at our heels," Solo said softly, to which Kuryakin, slowly bringing his gun hand to the left breast of his jacket, finished: "We are weary and find no rest." They young man, who introduced himself as a partner in ownership of the establishment, proffered a vintage bottle of wine courtesy of a "gentleman patron" from the bar; attached by a string to the neck of the wine bottle was a note scrawled in the most demonically miniscule of script albeit in an all-too-familiar hand: _The old fox has a nasty habit of showing up in the damnedest places and at the damnedest times._ The old fox had sent the young man "on a mission," to bring them the bottle. It was from 1920. Waverly could exhibit a near-nasty streak in dealing with his top agents, but more typically Waverly cherished the most cosmopolitan virtue of all, humor. Waverly no doubt understood that Solo had had his fill of fine French wine while on the last assignment. Waverly was known to approvingly quote Clive James's observation that "common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing." To be without one would be to be without the other, a double-lack that would doom the best spy to the worst frictionlessness of all - the inability to rub up against human nature, to strike the sparks of awareness and style that, in the most gruesome and unforgiving assignments, illuminated everything, especially the plots in their firm grip. The young man, probably fresh out of college, stiffly dressed for this crowd in a silver-buttoned navy blazer and Brooks Brothers striped tie, told them that he believed that the key to finding the fountain of youth is drinking wine "that is older than you. You'll never age." Kuryakin said, "It would be hard not to feel at least a little better, with all the booze and attention. But younger?" "Well, it's a very hard claim to test," the young man said with a smile, and turned to head back into the bar area of the Teardrops.) Kuryakin went on about how Solo's interest in the old woman and the little girl's enchantment might mean nothing, perhaps just the unreliability of one's own imagination - or the possibility that things are more connected than anyone can understand. Kuryakin pointed out that they could imagine a link between all the seemingly unrelated things that happened to Solo that night - from leaving Le Festi'Val and seeing the woman and the girl to Solo's encounter with the crooks, the loss of Solo's car, Solo's tryst with the doctor.

"Do you think there actually is one, Napoleon?"

"Yes. Everything leads to my car filled with bullet holes."

"Grieves and Loveless inadvertently get caught in the crossfire trying to make their getaway down that same road. Excellent result of coordinated effort across law enforcement agencies."

"A toast to the Gendarmerie Nationale." Solo took another tug on his drink. "Odd, isn't it, the set of random data points by which I simply moved across some screen before being faced with a connivance that I couldn't understand, though it seemed to belong to me?"

They began eating, and devoted the rest of their table talk to pawing for comprehension in a world far more complex than the one in which their stars rose, just a few years ago; Kuryakin wondered aloud if it was "the end of an era" or "the end of the world." Solo said he wondered if U.N.C.L.E.'s interrogators would learn anything of "the truth" from Grieves and Loveless; but the deeper he got into this affair with Grieves and Loveless, the less the truth seemed to matter to him, Solo confided to Kuryakin. The truth was subjective, wasn't it? (according to Kuryakin); no, no, it was not (according to Solo); but it shifts depending on your perspective or your memory or others' memories (in Kuryakin's words); people can play games with it if they want - but the truth is the truth (went the retort from Solo, who also paused to thank the server for bringing them more drinks); he wanted them to die (Solo confided, taking a long sip), and he wished that he, and not Kuryakin, had caught up with Grieves and Loveless finally because he wanted them dead, he wanted to wipe them off the face of this earth so he never had to think about them again.

"Were you in love with her?" Kuryakin asked.

Solo sipped his drink, set down his glass, and said, "Were you?"

They aborted their standoff stare when Waverly announced himself with a graveled throat clearing. They rose - or, rather, more or less scrambled to stand and smooth down their shirts and look presentable for their boss, while Waverly gave a certain appearance of weariness and resignation, as if he'd come to expect this sort of behavior from these two magnificent knuckleheads.

"Gentlemen," Waverly said. "What's this nonsense I hear at the bar about two top secret agents sitting in the back of the restaurant?"

"Sir," Solo said.

"Good evening, Mr. Waverly," Kuryakin said. "Thank you for sending — " He broke off when he noticed the slinky blonde standing at Waverly's side. She wore a short dusty rose silk dress, and a light blue scarf encircled her neck. She carried a tan cashmere coat in the crook of one arm.

With a smirk, Solo said to the woman, "Your place or mine?"

The woman returned a cold blue-eyed gaze from behind blonde bangs that fell almost to her lashes. "Really, Napoleon, must I always remind you that the mission comes first. After all, as I've said before, if we don't do our jobs, they won't let us play together."2

Solo laughed. "You always were the bastion of steely professionalism, especially compared to me."

Kuryakin glowered. "Angelique."

"And of course, I'm delighted to see you again, as well, Illya. The one with the turtleneck fetish, and, oh my, those pretty eyes and all that nice hair."

"Delighted?" Kuryakin quipped, raising an eyebrow. "I take that as an ominous sign. When lovely-but-evil women take an interest in me, it never turns out well, because there's nothing lovely-but-evil women like more than torturing me in violent and creepy and inappropriately sexual ways."

"Do tell!" Angelique said. "Napoleon, your friend was always much too grim."

"Simply because he disapproves of his partner's habit of sleeping with his mortal enemies?" Solo replied. "Nah, the truth is, he's jealous. After all, what red-blooded U.N.C.L.E. agent would not want to canoodle with a smoking-hot THRUSH beauty?"

"That's all very silly," she said dryly. "Illya, you should realize it's healthy and normal for blood enemies to occasionally, well, become involved with one another."

"Ah, yes, ahem - I'm afraid Mr. Solo's predilection for sleeping with the enemy is well known," Waverly said. "It's a dangerous habit. Angelique followed you two here this evening with the intention of killing you both, and possibly me."

Solo nodded quickly, appraising Angelique with a quick up and down look as if calculating, in spite of everything, what potential interactions might be in store. "Angelique, somehow I think this time around you and I are not working toward the same end."

"Let's not forget, Napoleon - it wouldn't be the first time she pointed a pistol at you," Kuryakin said.

"Only to have you come popping out of nowhere to scuttle my plans," Angelique said with mock dismay. "Leaving me to slink off in defeat. Tsk, tsk. Hardly any way to treat a lady." She looked bemused and intrigued by Kuryakin's bristling hostility toward her.

"Yes, crying shame," Kuryakin said.

"Oh, um, speaking of that, I heard the sad news," Angelique said, putting on a sad face and pouting. "But, you know, goodbye is always implied in this line of work."

"Easy! Easy, Illya," Solo said, stepping up to block Kuryakin from delivering an uppercut intended for Angelique's delicate jawline. "Illya, I propose that you and I lend Mr. Waverly a hand in escorting our very naughty young bird to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, where we can sort all this out."

"Yes! Perhaps we could agree on a temporary truce and pool our resources?" Angelique posited demurely, and fixing her gaze on Solo, continued, "And when all this is sorted out, who knows? Maybe we'll be in the mood for some good frisky fun, and we'll sort of head off together in one of those sporty old red Corvettes you seem to admire. You do still admire that streamlined bodywork, do you not, Napoleon?"

Solo held his tongue.

"Oh, nothing, Napoleon? Has the sophisticated, suave spy I know and love . . . evolved?" Angelique giggled. "And seriously, Illya - you are an amazing, dazzling creature! Those bangs!"

Solo anxiously and self-consciously touched his own locks. Waverly took Angelique by the crook of the arm, and yanked his agents' attention back to the mission. "Gentlemen, grab your coats and please follow us. I brought along a squad of U.N.C.L.E. agents to arrest Angelique and any other thugs who might be about. Please don't forget your wine."

"Ah, ah…" Solo said to Kuryakin, gently blocking his friend's reach. "I'll take that. Senior officer by two years!"

Kuryakin looked nonplussed. Because their partnership was built on gratuitous cruelty and relentless one-upsmanship, such behavior was customary, even obligatory. As they proceeded through the restaurant, Kuryakin turned to Solo and started to say something: "Someday you must tell me what it's like."

"Romancing someone who would kill me without a qualm?" Solo finished. "You said that last time. And what was my response, Illya?"

"Exactly the kind of response I would expect from you. 'It adds spice, Illya,' you cheerfully replied."

"It adds spice, Illya," Solo cheerfully replied, giving Kuryakin his characteristic wry grin. "It adds spice."

Solo and Kuryakin followed Waverly and Angelique into the street. The stars were icy; a bus rolled by, and, other than the snow from earlier that day crunching under their feet, the street was silent. Then came a crack. And one more. Waverly genuflected and swore.

"Take cover! Behind that sedan!" Solo yelled, dropping the bottle of wine behind him into a snowdrift, and along with Angelique and Kuryakin, hustle Waverly to a nearby sedan at curbside. With another crack, a slug shattered the wine bottle, dousing the snowdrift in a deep merlot-red and sending sparkling glass everywhere across the sidewalk.

"Well, that's a damned shame," Solo said.

"And completely unnecessary," Angelique added.

Waverly was holding his ear. Blood trickled down Waverly's neck and into his crisply starched white dress-shirt collar, and more blood was oozing through his fingers.

"Let me see, sir," Kuryakin said. "Well, if he was aiming for the tip of your ear lobe, he was quite accurate. You're okay, sir — a flesh wound."

They were pinned down. Every time Solo and Kuryakin tried to peer over the end of the sedan to identify the sniper's location, a slug would narrowly miss their heads. Angelique stood straight up and said, "I'll get the goon… I can't believe he missed," and before Solo or Kuryakin could intervene, drew a pistol from beneath her coat and fired. A shadow dropped three stories into a snowbank like a heavy drunkard falling into bed. Angelique turned around and slumped back down to the curb with her back to the car. "That takes of that," she said, cradling the gun in her lap.

"Give me that," Solo demanded. He and Kuryakin had their Specials pointed at the middle of her forehead.

"Aw, look at Napoleon and Illya, being all competent and good at their jobs," Angelique said. "This does my heart proud."

She handed the pistol to Solo with a small flourish, playfully dangling the weapon from its trigger ring with her little finger. "Whatever's mine is yours, darling," she said.

"You look resplendent just now, Angelique," Kuryakin said. "Killing people always seems to bring out the best in you."

"Oh, you think I had something to do with this little incident?" she replied in mock surprise.

U.N.C.L.E. field agents rushed into the warehouse to sweep through the building for any other suspects. Other agents ran to investigate the corpse of the fallen shooter. An agent shouted from the warehouse that all was secure, and then several agents came over to the sedan.

Solo stood and brusquely yanked Angelique up by the arm with him. "This young lady needs a cozy room _without_ a view," Solo told the agents firmly. "Mr. Waverly has been hurt. He needs to visit Section Six immediately."

Two agents grabbed and handcuffed Angelique's wrists behind her back and escorted her to a waiting black van. Another agent gingerly assisted Waverly to his feet and guided him by the elbow as they walked toward a black sedan.

Solo shook his head in disbelief as he stared at the pistol in his hand. It was a World War II-era Walther P38.

"Nothing like a little sniper action to spice things up," Kuryakin quipped, rising to survey the scene across the street.

"I think Angelique shops for her spice at the firing range," he said, still examining the pistol. "That was one damned lucky shot - from this distance, at night, and with an old German firearm."

"Good, not lucky," Kuryakin said. "She knew precisely where to find her target."

An evidence agent wandered over and took the weapon from Solo and dropped it in a plastic bag. Solo gazed across the street at the agents hovering around the corpse; a few others were measuring distances on the sidewalk and along the wall of the building.

Several minutes later, the scene had changed: the building had been wrapped in yellow law enforcement caution tape, U.N.C.L.E. sedan trunks had been loaded up with every scrap of detectable evidence, New York City Police Department officials had been consulted and informed, and the corpse had been ensconced in an ambulance and whisked away to the morgue at U.N.C.L.E. headquarters. Solo and Kuryakin glanced around the quiet street, warm amber light from the windows of the Teardrops spilling onto the sidewalk and the smell of roasted dinners drifting from the restaurant. Solo sighed and looked at his partner. "We need to replace our bottle of wine. Shall we?" He nodded at the Teardrops.

"There is a fine colloquialism I enjoy, something about doing things in style," Kuryakin said. "I propose that as long as we have to show up to work tomorrow, we do so in style, as it is said. Let's meet with Waverly at headquarters tomorrow afternoon, drink excellent French wine, and take a token stab at discussing our mission."

Solo smiled. "The time we sit around and drink wine is always so much better than the adventures in which actual spy-stuff happens."

U.N.C.L.E.'s two top North American operatives left the crime scene behind them and together walked toward the entrance of the Teardrops. Together, they once had sauntered casually away from a chemical compound, which subsequently exploded behind them.3 They once had sat side by side, scruffy and miserable, on a small raft, adrift in the ocean, waiting for a ship to come and rescue them (Solo never forgave Waverly for coming up with that horrid plan, and, in its wake, Kuryakin frequently confessed to suspecting Waverly surely must work for THRUSH).4 They had once, in the middle of the North African desert, clawed their way out of, of all things, a bear pit.5 They had once escaped a dungeon of skeletons, bondage, and hot pokers.6They had freed themselves from toil in a ruby mine.7 They had broken out of a barred cell in the storage compartment of a trans-European train.8 Tomorrow they would walk into U.N.C.L.E. headquarters, that "chrome and gunmetal madhouse," as a loopy captive of theirs once had called it,9 where, day after day, no rescue attempt, no escape plan could liberate hundreds of U.N.C.L.E. operatives from the interminable labor of piecing together little mysteries, making sure that serums of miraculous healing powers and weapons of mass destruction alike stayed out of the hands of miscreants, and keeping unwitting civilians safe from great peril. Not all their work was perfect: the recent few months were missing more than a few steps in any good direction. But the little wins were so well paced that most in the employee of U.N.C.L.E. found enough reward either in the wins or the comradery that emerged from these small advances, enough encouragement, at least, to keep working, if not in complete devotion then in quiet desperation. The death of April Dancer had cast a dull pall over the entire building, and employees were exceptionally dour and glum. There would be no memorial star; no plaques at any of U.N.C.L.E.'s headquarters buildings commemorated the fallen; the absence was a philosophical decision on the part of the founders of the Command, Waverly had attempted to explain years ago to Kuryakin and Solo, and finally, it had something in common, Waverly told them, with Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein_ , Waverly's favorite work of fiction, a story in which, Waverly said, grotesque characters living in an even uglier world seek ways of liberating themselves from their misery but never become normal. Intimacy, Waverly told them, did not need to be healthy to be genuine.

When Solo and Kuryakin stepped through the doorway of the Teardrops, the place went completely quiet. Forks and knives suspended themselves between plate and mouth. Raised drinks froze to a halt in mid-drink. Someone whispered, "No idea. Spooks of some kind." One lady poked her husband, as if to say, "Only in New York!" An old guy with a mean red face and a Teamster's haircut scowled and said something that sounded like "Fruitcakes." The pretty maitre d' bounced up to them with a big smile and whispered, "Sorry, just ignore them. We're not used to so much drama around here. You gave us quite a show."

Kuryakin said, "Scandalizing the sensibilities of the masses is sometimes part of the vocation."

Solo, glancing at his friend, arched a curious brow and suppressed his laughter. "It is?" In spite of all the years away from his Slavic homeland, Kuryakin still could come up with the odd aphorism that sounded straight from the pages of a socio-economic revolutionary manifesto.

"We're very accepting of everyone," the maitre d' said in hushed tones. "You two are more than welcome with us anytime. Not just on special days like Valentine's Day."

"Uh, I wonder if you might not have the wrong idea-" Solo began.

"Oh, here." She grabbed a bottle of wine that had been sitting on the end of the bar and handed it to Solo. It looked exactly like the other bottle. "Here's to hoping that your Valentine's Day celebration ends up a little happier than it started."

"Um, celebration? Uh, as I was saying, I think you might have the wrong idea about us," Solo began, and then, apparently thinking better of attempting an explanation, held up the bottle of wine and instead asked, "How?"

"The gentleman with you, the one who looked like he got shot. He called it in a few minutes ago. I hope everyone is okay?"

"No harm, plenty of foul," Solo said. "But it could have been much worse."

"Well, maybe the wine will help salvage your evening."

"Couldn't hurt," Solo said with a smile.

"This one is a few years younger but I think you will like it. Really too bad about that other bottle," she said with a quick glance to the window. "Oh, sigh, why do bad things happen to good people," she added with a grin.

"Maybe it's just been that kind of year," Kuryakin said, not grinning at all.

"Indeed," Solo added. "And it's only February."

_ _Still to come: an epilog to_ The Protégé Affair.

 **Footnotes**

1 See _The Utopia Affair (The Man from U.N.C.L.E. #15)_ by David McDaniel (Ace Books, New York, 1968), Ch.1.

2 See "The Deadly Games Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 5.

3 See "The Deadly Games Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 5.

4 See "The Shark Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 2.

5 See "The Secret Sceptre Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 12.

6 See "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 19.

7 See "The Tigers Are Coming Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 2, episode 3.

8 See "The Adriatic Express Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 2, episode 11.

9 See "The Mad, Mad Tea Party Affair," from _The Man from U.N.C.L.E._ NBC/MGM television series, season 1, episode 11.


	6. Chapter 6

The Protégé Affair

Epilogue: "We Know What We Are But Know Not What We May Be."

In 1947, when Krystyna Guerreskaya Skarbek was offered this bar - a low-ceilinged dive on the edge of Tompkins Square Park, where she had worked since she had immigrated from Poland, a decade earlier, with seeming prescience enough to elude the coming Nazi threat - she was packing to move to Florida. The owner, who was also Polish, had heard the escape plan and decided that she, too, wanted out. She asked Krystyna - known to regulars as Tina - to take over the liquor license so that she could retire. "Long time you'll be happy," Tina recalled the woman saying, and so she agreed. Twenty-six years later, not much had changed: the interior looked like an archived _film noir_ set (wood veneer, linoleum flooring, fluorescent red lighting), and, aside from biannual trips to Poland, when she would shut the place down for several weeks, Tina still worked from open to close. A few nights after Valentine's Day, she stood behind the bar, serving Żywiec beer to a late-career U.N.C.L.E. regional headquarters chief who was commiserating with Tina on the burdens of middle management. The old guy looked up from his beer glass and caught his reflection in the bar mirror - craggy, as they often said, but not unhandsome, he thought to himself with a suppressed chuckle. He winced a little, catching sight of the white bandage that clung to his left earlobe. _Ah, the wages of war_ , he thought to himself with a subdued chuckle. _You'll never be the same again, Alexander._ Natalya, Tina's granddaughter, stacked crates of P.B.R. and poured Żubrówka - a lush rye vodka, flavored with grass from the Białowieża Forest - for tourists. In the back, East Village lifers shot pool, and a man celebrated his roommate's arrest, which had resulted from a brawl over unpaid rent. Flush for now, he bought a round of Serbian slivovitz (a throat-burning plum brandy) and toasted the N.Y.P.D. in absentia.

A man came in and took the stool to Alexander Waverly's left. As if on signal, Natalya walked behind the bar and informed her grandmother that it was time she (Natalya) took over the bartending duties. Fifteen minutes later, Waverly was still stunned at the mess of a man Natalya had left on the floor - a shuddering puddle in a dark overcoat, gasping for breath, holding a bleeding nose. _Consequences_ , Waverly thought to himself with a smug chuckle. _There are always consequences, my friend._

Several minutes later, the U.N.C.L.E. headquarters night shift commander was on the scene. He was impeccably dressed in a grey wool Brooks Brothers business suit and a blue silk-knit tie, neatly knotted, over a crisp white dress shirt. His dark locks were combed neatly, not a hair out of place.

"The hours are killing me, sir," said Napoleon Solo, nearly stumbling over the heap on the floor. "Oh, what have we here?"

"Some trouble, to which our dear Natalya graciously tended," Waverly said. He winked at Natalya, who smiled demurely while wiping glasses clean with a white cotton towel.

"Good morning, Natalya," Solo said with a boyish smile.

"Good to see you again, Mr. Solo," she replied, smiling, her eyes twinkling.

From a table in a back corner, Tina looked up from a sheath of papers and proclaimed, "Ah, Mr. Solo. My favorite customer! Next to Mr. Waverly, of course. Did you come to flirt again with my granddaughter?"

"Why, no, I came to flirt with you, Tina."

Tina giggled, and Natalya, blushing, renewed her attention to cleaning glasses.

Solo motioned sharply for the forces he'd brought along to attend to the thug on the floor. They cuffed him and dragged him out the door into the night - next stop, lockup in U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.

Solo took the vacated stool next to Waverly. "You are out late this evening, sir."

"All for the good of the cause, Mr. Solo," Waverly said with a good-natured grin. "Seems our Thrush friend thought I might be susceptible to a little extortion."  
Solo raised an eyebrow.

"Last December I paid for safe passage of my top three agents out of the Soviet Union," Waverly said.

Solo kept quiet.

"I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

"I understand, sir."

"Unfortunately, that choice also opened inroads to extortion attempts, the most recent of which was this evening's visit. When I refused to comply, the man at your feet pulled a gun on me."

"And that's when Natalya sprang into action."

In reply, Waverly broke into a big smile. He was still impressed that, through it all, not a drop of his tall glass of Żywiec beer had spilled. No sooner had the man reached inside his coat than Natalya had gone to work. She had used the bar counter the way a gymnast used a vaulting bench, springing stiff-armed to bring her body over the counter and swing her feet in an orbit that ended at the man's jaw. The man had gone to the floor, and Natalya had delivered a swift open-handed martial glance to the mid-sternum and a punch to the nose, leaving the man struggling for breath and wheezing through a stream of blood.

"I hope they get the message," Solo said. "Two attempts on your life in only days is cause for concern."

"Thrush wants Grieves, Loveless, and Angelique. The three are obviously of some value to Thrush. We're not sure why, but we know now Thrush is willing to go to certain lengths."

Waverly turned to Natalya. "My dear, could you pour two cognacs? Neat, I assume, Mr. Solo?"

"Of course, Mr. Waverly," Natalya said. "We are closed now, but I am making an exception. My grandmother will cut the lights soon and start shooing people out of here with a flashlight."

"Thank you, Natalya," Waverly said. "We'll be out of your way momentarily."

"I don't think I should, Mr. Waverly," Solo said. "I'm on duty."

"As am I," Waverly said. "Tell me when we are not."

Solo chuckled. "Excellent point, sir. One I can drink to."

"There's more," Waverly said. "The Thrush friend who was just escorted from here happened to be carrying several important pieces of paper on his person - bank papers related to the extortion attempt."

"Bank papers. With bank account numbers on them, I presume?"

"You presume correctly, Mr. Solo."

"What a stroke of luck."

"Indeed. With any continued good luck and if all goes well, we could take down a network of Thrush operations."

"It seems almost too easy."

"And that's why I have two of the best agents in law enforcement working for me," Waverly said. "I will need you and Mr. Kuryakin to verify these numbers, see where they lead, to whom and to how much, of course, before we determine our course of action."

"We're on it, sir."

Waverly and Solo raised their glasses in a toast to one another. _Still on duty! Amusing. The agent certainly kept his act together, as they said nowadays_ , Waverly thought to himself. He sometimes wondered about the authenticity of what his agents portrayed to him of themselves, but he also had decided long ago that it was best to take the word and the traits of his agents on face value. If he could not do that with a top agent, then there was nobody… He let the thought die.

 _We're on it, sir._ Waverly stifled a chuckle. _How earnest. Or perhaps he merely knew the right things to say._

Waverly brought the snifter of cognac to his nose. The first whiff soared through his nose and landed somewhere inside his left thigh. The aftertaste left a sweet burn, like a peach cooked under an open flame. He relished the ensuing warm glow, a sensation enhanced by the morning's small victory, which brought with it, as well, a reminder of the fine agents who surrounded him and supported his abiding belief in somehow protecting the world from itself.

Tina calculated end-of-night tabs (cash only) from memory, a practice that Waverly admired for how it rewarded endurance. At 4 a.m., she cut the lights and shooed everyone - including the U.N.C.L.E. New York City regional headquarters chief and his number one Operations and Enforcement agent - out with a flashlight. A straggler asked Natalya if she'd take over the bar. A voice slurred from the sidewalk, "Natalya, darling, I love you!" "I hope not," she said, and let the door slam behind her.

 _A Few Weeks Later_

It could be disorienting to slip through the familiar, steaming tailor shop that, since 1964, had led to the inner workings of the New York City headquarters of the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, a fluorescent-slick fortress for justice in the 1970s, and be whisked up two flights of steel-toned elevators, down another fluorescent-lit hallway, through two sets of steel doors, into a dimly lit room filled with blinking computer lights and a tweedy, pipe-smoking gentleman.

The setup was much to the liking of the headquarters' commanding officer. Alexander Waverly thought it a convenient ploy for putting off guard the newcomer, the enemy, or even, perversely, the familiar subordinate. By now, Waverly's top Section Two (Operations and Enforcement) agents, Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin, were used to the convoluted route to this office, but Waverly noticed even from them an occasional dazed look on their entrance through those last steel doors.

From time to time, during rare occasions when the headquarters reached a lull in operations, he and Solo and Kuryakin would gather for a friendly chat, as Waverly liked to think of it. In this room, with its view toward the United Nations building, such conversations could range broadly. Their subject was spying. Their obsessions were secrecy and betrayal. The three men were highly educated and trained cosmopolitan people - an American, an Englishman, and a Russian, each of particular background - and friends and admirers of each other's work. Their casual conversations in Waverly's office were inevitably warm, interesting, witty, and discursive, sometimes conspiratorial and gossipy, although their gossip was espionage-related and more rarefied than the average citizens.

They met a little past lunchtime now, on a desultorily sunny weekday in early March. Over a bottle of white wine and, among other things, smoked salmon served under a glass from which clouds of smoke actually billowed out, Waverly and the two agents were in good spirits and needed little prompting to speak. It had been three weeks since U.N.C.L.E. had secured key bank codes to Thrush funds for a network of East Coast operations, and still, every morning and every afternoon, another flurry of reports landed on Waverly's desks detailing the collapse of Thrush operations up and down the eastern continental United States, New York City to the District of Columbia to Miami. Thrush even was threatening the assassination of any Thrush operative who refused to cooperate with the termination of the affected operations - several rogue Thrushes already had met an untimely death, or, euphemistically, gone missing.

Their conversation took a turn - an almost inexplicable turn, it seemed to Waverly - to discussing spies and criminals they knew personally, or knew of: Thrush spies and criminals, Russian spies and criminals, MI6 spies, double agents, and the sort of femme fatale who had a habit of looking up Solo and Kuryakin - and sometimes himself - when visiting New York City. _You men, you characters, knuckleheads_ , he thought to himself, feeling an irrepressible smile spread across his face. _How I have counted on you, how I have trusted you. You have been here through thick and then, and still, after all your adventures together, you remain, in many ways, polar opposites. Here we have Mr. Solo, urbane, self-assured, sociable, charming, and laid-back. Korean War veteran, grandfather an admiral, another grandfather an ambassador. Skilled in the martial arts, can fly a plane and a helicopter. A wide knowledge of literature, something he shares with his partner. A serial womanizer, and that can spell trouble, although certainly more thoughtful and less brutish than a certain peer of his in the MI6 – "Solo believes women are created equal, only some are more equal than others," hadn't someone joked one time. Mr. Kuryakin, on the other hand, is reserved, intellectual, and intense. Ambiguous, an enigma, even now, hiding, rather than revealing much of his background or personality. "No one knows what Illya Kuryakin does when he goes home at night," is the joke in the New York City office. Greater technical and scientific knowledge than his partner. Mr. Solo comes across as the more accessible and straightforward of the two men, and perhaps, for that reason alone, he might make the strongest candidate for a suitable protégé. Dresses the part, too, with his taste for expensive suits and ties._ In the midst of his reverie, Waverly caught Solo glancing at the bookshelves above where Waverly was seated.

"Anything in particular catch your eye, Mr. Solo?"

"John le Carré, sir. Which of his novels did you read first?"

Waverly smiled, pleased with the question. Books were a joy. "Oh, I think it was _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_. It had a profound impact on me. I always felt that the books were deeply based in experience. It's no accident that some of our greatest writers have been spooks - Greene, Somerset Maugham, Ian Fleming, and Priestly. Spying and fiction are not entirely different processes. An author like le Carré tries to create an artificial world. And the better and more realistic and more emotionally believable one can make that world, as either a spy or a novelist, the better one is going to be at it. These are characters who make up their past, who make up their present and who try to imagine a future."

Kuryakin poked his hand up like a schoolboy. "If I may offer an idea, sir…"

"Please, Mr. Kuryakin."

"The spy or law enforcement agent and the writer must also contemplate all the varieties of a person's character," Kuryakin said. "Could she be this? Could he be that? Can I turn him or her into that other person? All of those are actually the serious preoccupations of a novelist. One of the fascinations of the intelligence world is that it's such a reflection of the society it serves. If you really want to examine the national psychology, it's locked in the secret world."

"Well said, Illya," Solo said, raising his glass. "Sir, you were recruited by Britain's intelligence services as a young man, were you not?"

"It was the typical sort of tap on the shoulder," Waverly said. "It was quite amusing, really. A professor whom I did not know terribly well came barreling up and said, 'What are you doing after university?' I said, 'I don't really know.' And he said, 'Well, there are some parts of the Foreign Office that are different from other parts of the Foreign Office. In a sense, they are different from the Foreign Office itself.' He went on for about five minutes. Of course, I knew exactly what he was saying, although he never actually said it.

"So I went along to Carlton House Terrace, where MI6 had an office. There's something very louche about British intelligence, something very unmoored. I don't know whether it creates people who go off the rails, or whether you have to be slightly off the rails to want to do it."

"What happened then?" Solo asked.

"I had one other meeting."

"And no lunch?"

"It never got that far. I elected for military service instead, as you know. Devoted myself to a career in military intelligence that culminated in service as a British Naval Intelligence Commander," Waverly said, and with a sweep of his hand: "…which, oddly, somehow led to all of this."

Solo laughed. "And none of all of this has ever been off the rails."

"Good point, Mr. Solo," Waverly responded, chuckling. "Something else. Early in his writing, le Carré introduced the subversive hypothesis that the spies of East and West were two sides of the same tarnished coin, each as bad as the other. It was a stunning idea, espionage painted not in black and white but in shades of gray. I sometimes wonder if we have not lost the scaffolding for our work. Thrush are the bad guys, true enough. But Thrush increasingly will take advantage of this tarnished coin, pitting one superpower against another, ultimately undermining and destroying both to further its own gain. I fear that we are going into a decade that will be angrier, more polemical, darker, with Thrush missions taking advantage of the chaotic morality of a superpower-less world and presenting the United States - with its exceptionalism, its flouting of international norms - as the villain in this strange new world."

"That is worrisome," Kuryakin said.

"It's merely conjecture, of course," Waverly said. "The important thing is that we keep doing well what we do well. Thrush will be back to normal in no time. They seem to have interminable wealth at their command."

Kuryakin set down his glass. "Our two governments, the American and the Russian - everyone now exists somewhere in a foggy, deniable hinterland. It's called _maskirovka_ \- little masquerade - where you create so much confusion and uncertainty and mystery that no one knows what the truth is. This is how it was for me in Russia, growing up. Secrets, lies."

Waverly refilled their glasses. He was feeling expansive. He was impressed by Kuryakin's insight, impressed even more by his seemingly newfound willingness to share his insight, and what's more, to refer to his background (Waverly would never let on how much he actually knew - Kuryakin's background investigation report, ensconced in the bowels of the building in a steel safe, ran more than 500 double-spaced typed pages). _Perhaps, with a little grooming, he is suitable, after all,_ Waverly thought to himself.

"And much as for you, Mr. Kuryakin, the truth, in my childhood, didn't really exist," Waverly said. "That is to say, we shared the lies. To run the household with no money required a lot of serious lying to the local garage man, the local butcher, the local everybody. And then there was the extra element of class. All my grandparents and all my aunts and uncles were entirely working class - laborers, builders, that sort of thing. One of them worked up telegraph poles. And so out of that to invent, as my father did, this socially adept, well-spoken, charming chap - that was an operation of great complicity. And I had to lie about my parental situation while I was at boarding school. It all came out during my clearance investigation for the Navy, of course. I only mention these things because they're the extremes of what can warp an Englishman."

Solo raised an eyebrow in bemusement. "I don't believe I've heard you describe it like that, sir," Solo said. "The extremes of what can warp an Englishman. That is very well said. It's an apt description in our case, too, I might add. We've certainly seen the extremes of what can warp an U.N.C.L.E. agent. I think it's safe to say we'll all have earned our retirement."

Waverly cleared his throat. The subject made him nervous.

"You are barely out of your 50s, sir; your service will be needed for some time," Kuryakin remarked, producing a mystification in Waverly that he ascribed to the wine.

"Thank you, Mr. Kuryakin. But what will I do after that? I really think this decade will be my last performance. So I should look at reality. Trouble is, reality means choosing a protégé. Would it surprise you to learn I had Ms. Dancer in mind?"

There was a long silence. Waverly waited. Finally Solo spoke up.

"It would not, sir," he said. "She was more than suitable. She exhibited tremendous grace under pressure. She was extremely intelligent, an expert with weapons, highly knowledgeable in science and technology, and… well, she could establish an easy rapport."

Waverly frowned, his focus on the wine in front of him going soft. "Of course, I no longer have that opportunity. I would have enjoyed giving the spy world its first female _primus inter pares_."

"But it is hard not to do this work, if this is the work you do, is it not?" Kuryakin asked.

"It's the only thing you can do, in a way," Waverly said. "I cannot stand idleness. I cannot stand not working in this line of work."

"Retirement," Solo said, sighing. "It is hard to imagine. I would think you'd feel you've come full circle or closed the door on a part of your life."

Waverly caught himself looking back at himself in one of the dark windows that framed New York City's eastern skyline. He stared at his reflection awkwardly. The bandage was gone; so was an ear lobe; he would have to get used to it. There were times when he stood by his office windows with his first cup of coffee and gazed at the gleaming United Nations building windows in the morning light. Even the tops of trucks and taxis that cut one another off in the streets far below looked better through the dark-tinted glass. He liked the huge windows rimmed in their rounded dark metal, enjoyed watching the traffic and pedestrians of Forty-Third Street far below, cherished the sense of soothing shelter from the noisy streets. He thought he must be nuts; he liked it here.

"I guess it would be, for me, some sort of celebration," Waverly said, turning his attention back to his two top Operations and Enforcement agents. "I hope by then that I am just about grown up enough to face the truth about myself."


End file.
